Italian Court Rules ISP Block of The Pirate Bay Illegal

Court of Bergamo restores access to the Sweden-based BitTorrent tracker site.

Almost two months ago I mentioned how an Italian judge from the Court of Bergamo had ordered Italian ISPs to begin blocking customer access to The Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker site.

Now comes word that The Pirate Bay has successfully won an appeal of the judge's order and have had the block lifted.

"The Pirate Bay won the case in Italy," proclaims The Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde. " The lawyers have done a fantastic job! Will report on this later!"

However, he also said that it is still possible that the appeal could be overturned. Either way, it's still good news for The Pirate Bay who've already seen an increase in traffic.

"Even though I don’t think the site is accessible in Italy via many ISPs yet, the site had a new record in visitors coming from Italy today," continues Sunde. "By 12%!"

The effort was ultimately in vain, for in addition to changing the IP addresses for The Pirate Bay, which made it "work for half the ISPs again," they also set up a mirror site called La Baia (labaiia.org) which means "The Bay" in Italian.

It came on the heels of the closure of Colombo-BT.org, the apparent largest BitTorrent tracker site in Italy, by Guardia di Finanza in cooperation with FPM, the Italian anti-music piracy group affiliated with the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).